'Impressive' Curiosity landing only 1.5 miles off, NASA says

By Jason Hanna, CNN

Updated 6:25 PM ET, Tue August 14, 2012

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this January 19, 2016, selfie while sitting at "Namib Dune." The rover was scooping up sand from the dune to analyze. The photo combines 57 images taken during the rover's 1,228th Martian day, or Sol. The photos were taken at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity has snapped a selfie, which is actually a series of selfies combined. The images show the spacecraft above the "Buckskin" rock target where it drilled and collected its seventh sample of the Martian soil. Dozens of images taken on August 5 were combined to create the photo.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The car-size NASA spacecraft landed on Mars at 1:32 a.m. EDT on August 6, 2012. Curiosity snapped the images used for this self-portrait on February 3, 2013.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity snapped the images used in this panorama of Mount Sharp on April 10 and April 11. The rover's mission is to investigate Mount Sharp for clues about the Martian environment and how it has changed over time.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover drilled this dime-sized hole to collect a sample from a rock called "Buckskin" on July 30.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity has temperature and humidity sensors mounted on its mast. New calculations based on Curiosity's measurements indicate that Mars could be dotted with tiny puddles of salty water at night.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This April 10 view from the navigation camera on Curiosity shows the terrain ahead of the rover as it makes its way west through a valley called "Artist's Drive."

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The Mars rover Curiosity does a test drill on a rock dubbed "Bonanza King" to determine whether it would be a good place to dig deeper and take a sample. But after the rock shifted, the test was stopped.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity used the equivalent of a dust broom to sweep away reddish oxidized dust from the Bonanza King rock. The rover's team decided to ditch the site and drive Curiosity toward other destinations.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Wheel tracks from Curiosity are seen on the sandy floor of a lowland area dubbed "Hidden Valley" in this image taken August 4.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover recently encountered this iron meteorite, which NASA named Lebanon. This find is similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity took this nighttime photo of a hole it drilled May 5 to collect soil samples. NASA said this image combines eight exposures taken after dark on May 13.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

An arm of Curiosity drills two holes into sandstone on May 5. The rock powder collected will be analyzed by the rover's onboard instruments.

This view of the twilight sky and Martian horizon, taken by Curiosity, includes Earth as the brightest point of light in the night sky. Earth is a little left of center in the image, and our moon is just below Earth. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This mosaic of images from the Navigation Camera on Curiosity shows the terrain to the west from the rover's position on the 528th Martian day, or sol, of the mission on January 30. The images were taken right after Curiosity had arrived at the eastern edge of a location called "Dingo Gap."

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

An illustration depicts the possible extent of an ancient lake inside Gale Crater, where the rover landed in August 2012. The $2.5 billion NASA mission set out to explore Gale Crater, which was thought to have once hosted flowing water. Curiosity found evidence of clay formations, or "mudstone," in the crater's Yellowknife Bay, scientists said in 2013. This clay may have held the key ingredients for life billions of years ago. It means a lake must have existed in the area.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Martian dust appears on the surface of a penny that was brought along with the Curiosity rover and photographed by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on October 2. The image of the 1909 coin is at the highest resolution possible for the high-powered camera: 14 micrometers per pixel (a micrometer is about .000039 inches).

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The Curiosity rover took this image of a rock formation informally dubbed "Darwin." Scientists had the rover stop in this region, called Waypoint 1, because it appeared to be a prime area to study the inner makeup and history of the floor of the Gale Crater. Analysis of Darwin may provide evidence of whether water played a role in the layering of rocks in this region.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity began a trek toward Mount Sharp after spending more than six months in the "Glenelg" area. This image was taken on July 16, 2013, after the rover passed the 1-kilometer mark for the total distance covered since the start of the mission.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The lower slopes of Mount Sharp are visible at the top of this image, taken on July 9, 2013. The turret of tools at the end of the rover's arm, including the rock-sampling drill in the lower left corner, can also be seen.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image, taken by the rover on July 8, 2013, shows the tracks left behind after the rover's first drive away from the "Glenelg" area.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity drilled into a rock target called "Cumberland" on May 19, 2013, and it collected a powdered sample of material from the rock's interior. The sample will be compared to an earlier drilling at the "John Klein" site, which has a similar appearance and is about 9 feet away.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Mars once had conditions favorable for microbial life, NASA scientists announced on March 12, 2013. One piece of evidence for that conclusion comes from this area of the Martian surface, nicknamed "Sheepbed." It shows veins of sediments that scientist believe were deposited under water and was an environment once hospitable to life.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rock on the left, called Wopmay, was discovered by the rover Opportunity, which arrived in 2004 on a different part of Mars. Iron-bearing sulfates indicate that this rock was once in acidic waters. On the right are rocks from Yellowknife Bay, where rover Curiosity was situated. These rocks are suggestive of water with a neutral pH, which is hospitable to life formation.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill. The image was taken by Curiosity's mast camera on February 20, 2013.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover drilled this hole, in a rock that's part of a flat outcrop researchers named "John Klein," during its first sample drilling on February 8, 2013.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity's first set of nighttime photos include this image of Martian rock illuminated by ultraviolet lights. Curiosity used the camera on its robotic arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, to capture the images on January 22, 2013.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Another nighttime image includes this rock called Sayunei in the Yellowknife Bay area of Mars' Gale Crater. Curiosity's front-left wheel had scraped the rock to inspect for fresh, dust-free materials in an area where drilling for rock would soon begin.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Other night photos included this image of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm. For scale, a penny on the calibration target is three-fourths of an inch in diameter.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A view of what NASA describes as "veined, flat-lying rock." It was selected as the first drilling site for the Mars rover.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity used a dust-removal tool for the first time to clean this patch of rock on the Martian surface on January 6, 2013.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover captured this mosaic of images of winding rocks known as the Snake River on December 20, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A view of the shallow depression known as "Yellowknife Bay," taken by the rover on December 12, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The Mars rover Curiosity recorded this view from its left navigation camera after an 83-foot eastward drive on November 18, 2012. The view is toward "Yellowknife Bay" in the "Glenelg" area of Gale Crater.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Three "bite marks" made by the rover's scoop can be seen in the soil on Mars surface on October 15, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity delivered a sample of Martian soil to the rover's observation tray for the first time on October 16, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image shows part of the small pit or bite created when NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected its second scoop of Martian soil on October 15, 2012. The rover team determined that the bright particle near the center of the image was native to Mars, and not debris from the rover's landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image shows what the rover team has determined to be a piece of debris from the spacecraft, possibly shed during the landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover's scoop contains larger soil particles that were too big to filter through a sample-processing sieve. After a full-scoop sample had been vibrated over the sieve, this portion was returned to the scoop for inspection by the rover's mast camera.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This 360-degree panorama shows the area where the rover will spend about three weeks collecting scoopfuls of soil for examination. The photo comprises images taken from the rover's navigation camera on October 5, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

An area of windblown sand and dust downhill from a cluster of dark rocks has been selected as the likely location for the first use of the scoop on the arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site on October 3, 2012. This gave researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for what scientists believe was an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here. The key evidence for the ancient stream comes from the size and rounded shape of the gravel in and around the bedrock, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech science team. The rounded shape leads the science team to conclude they were transported by a vigorous flow of water. The grains are too large to have been moved by wind.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This photo is an up-close look at an outcrop that also shows evidence of flowing water, according to the JPL/Caltech science team. The outcrop's characteristics are consistent with rock that was formed by the deposition of water and is composed of many smaller rounded rocks cemented together. Water transport is the only process capable of producing the rounded shape of conglomerate rock of this size.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity completed its longest drive to date on September 26, 2012. The rover moved about 160 feet east toward the area known as "Glenelg." As of that day the rover had moved about a quarter-mile from its landing site.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image shows the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity with the first rock touched by an instrument on the arm. The photo was taken by the rover's right navigation camera.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image combines photographs taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager at three distances from the first Martian rock that NASA's Curiosity rover touched with its arm. The images reveal that the target rock has a relatively smooth, gray surface with some glinty facets reflecting sunlight and reddish dust collecting in recesses in the rock.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This rock will be the first target for Curiosity's contact instruments. Located on a turret at the end of the rover's arm, the contact instruments include the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer for reading a target's elemental composition and the Mars Hand Lens Imager for close-up imaging.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Researchers used the Curiosity rover's mast camera to take a photo of the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer. The image was used to see whether it had been caked in dust during the landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Researchers also used the mast camera to examine the Mars Hand Lens Imager on the rover to inspect its dust cover and check that its LED lights were functional. In this image, taken on September 7, 2012, the imager is in the center of the screen with its LED on. The main purpose of Curiosity's imager camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil from the Martian surface.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This is the open inlet where powdered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. The image is made up of eight photos taken on September 11, 2012, by the imager and is used to check that the instrument is operating correctly.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This is the calibration target for the imager. This image, taken on September 9, 2012, shows that the surface of the calibration target is covered with a layor of dust as a result of the landing. The calibration target includes color references, a metric bar graphic, a penny for scale comparison, and a stair-step pattern for depth calibration.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This view of the three left wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images that were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager on September 9, 2012, the 34th day of Curiosity's work on Mars. In the distance is the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This view of the lower front and underbelly areas of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager. Also visible are the hazard avoidance cameras on the front of the rover.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The penny in this image is part of a camera calibration target on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The image was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The rover captured this mosiac of a rock feature called 'Snake River" on December 20, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The reclosable dust cover on Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager was opened for the first time on September 8, 2012, enabling MAHLI to take this image.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The Curiosity rover used a camera on its arm to obtain this self-portrait on September 7, 2012. The image of the top of Curiosity's Remote Sensing Mast, showing the Mastcam and Chemcam cameras, was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager. The angle of the frame reflects the position of the MAHLI camera on the arm when the image was taken.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The left eye of the Mast Camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the rover's arm on September 5, 2012.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Sub-image one of three shows the rover and its tracks after a few short drives. Tracking the tracks will provide information on how the surface changes as dust is deposited and eroded.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Sub-image two shows the parachute and backshell, now in color. The outer band of the parachute has a reddish color.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Sub-image three shows the descent stage crash site, now in color, and several distant spots (blue in enhanced color) downrange that are probably the result of distant secondary impacts that disturbed the surface dust.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

An image released August 27, 2012, was taken with Curiosity rover's 100-millimeter mast camera, NASA says. The image shows Mount Sharp on the Martian surface. NASA says the rover will go to this area.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The Mars rover Curiosity moved about 15 feet forward and then reversed about 8 feet during its first test drive on August 22, 2012. The rover's tracks can be seen in the right portion of this panorama taken by the rover's navigation camera.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

NASA tested the steering on its Mars rover Curiosity on August 21, 2012. Drivers wiggled the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Curiosity moved its robot arm on August 20, 2012, for the first time since it landed on Mars. "It worked just as we planned," said JPL engineer Louise Jandura in a NASA press release. This picture shows the 7-foot-long arm holding a camera, a drill, a spectrometer, a scoop and other tools. The arm will undergo weeks of tests before it starts digging.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

With the addition of four high-resolution Navigation Camera, or Navcam, images, taken on August 18, 2012. Curiosity's 360-degree landing-site panorama now includes the highest point on Mount Sharp visible from the rover. Mount Sharp's peak is obscured from the rover's landing site by this highest visible point.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This composite image, with magnified insets, depicts the first laser test by the Chemistry and Camera, or ChemCam, instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The composite incorporates a Navigation Camera image taken prior to the test, with insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the difference between images taken before and after the laser interrogation of the rock.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

An updated self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity, showing more of the rover's deck. This image is a mosiac compiled from images taken from the navigation camera. The wall of Gale Crater, the rover's landing site, can be seen at the top of the image.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image shows what will be the rover's first target with it's chemistry and camera (ChemCam) instrument. The ChemCam will fire a laser at the rock, indicated by the black circle. The laser will cause the rock to emit plasma, a glowing, ionized gas. The rover will then analyze the plasma to determine the chemical composition of the rock.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This is a close-up of the rock that will be the ChemCam's first target.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image, cropped from a larger panorama, shows an area, near the rover's rear left wheel, where the surface material was blown away by the descent-stage rockets.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image, with a portion of the rover in the corner, shows the wall of Gale Crater running across the horizon at the top of the image.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image, taken from the rover's mast camera, looks south of the landing site toward Mount Sharp.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This partial mosaic from the Curiosity rover shows Mars' environment around the rover's landing site on Gale Crater. NASA says the pictured landscape resembles portions of the U.S. Southwest. The high-resolution mosaic includes 130 images, but not all the images have been returned by the rover to Earth. The blackened areas of the mosaic are the parts that haven't been transmitted yet. See more on this panaroma on NASA's site.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

In this portion of the larger mosaic from the previous frame, the crater wall can be seen north of the landing site, or behind the rover. NASA says water erosion is believed to have created a network of valleys, which enter Gale Crater from the outside here.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

In this portion of the larger mosaic from the previous frame, the crater wall can be seen north of the landing site, or behind the rover. NASA says water erosion is believed to have created a network of valleys, which enter Gale Crater from the outside here.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Two blast marks from the descent stage's rockets can be seen in the center of this image. Also seen is Curiosity's left side. This picture is a mosaic of images taken by the rover's navigation cameras.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A color image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the pebble-covered surface of Mars. This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each. Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each, are expected to be transmitted to Earth later.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A panoramic photograph shows the Curiosity rover's surroundings at its landing site inside Gale Crater. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen to the left, and the base of Mount Sharp is to the center-right.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A partial view of a 360-degree color panorama of the Curiosity rover's landing site on Gale Crater. The panorama comes from low-resolution versions of images taken August 9, 2012, with a 34-millimeter mast camera. Cameras mounted on Curiosity's remote sensing mast have beamed back fresh images of the site.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

NASA's Curiosity rover took this self-portrait using a camera on its newly deployed mast.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

A close-up view of an area at the NASA Curiosity landing site where the soil was blown away by the thrusters during the rover's descent on August 6, 2012. The excavation of the soil reveals probable bedrock outcrop, which shows the shallow depth of the soil in this area.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This color full-resolution image showing the heat shield of NASA's Curiosity rover was obtained during descent to the surface of Mars on August 13, 2012. The image was obtained by the Mars Descent Imager instrument known as MARDI and shows the 15-foot diameter heat shield when it was about 50 feet from the spacecraft.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This first image taken by the Navigation cameras on Curiosity shows the rover's shadow on the surface of Mars.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The color image captured by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on August 7, 2012, has been rendered about 10% transparent so that scientists can see how it matches the simulated terrain in the background.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image comparison shows a view through a Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover before and after the clear dust cover was removed. Both images were taken by a camera at the front of the rover. Mount Sharp, the mission's ultimate destination, looms ahead.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera captured this image about 24 hours after landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image is a 3-D view in front of NASA's Curiosity rover. The anaglyph was made from a stereo pair of Hazard-Avoidance Cameras on the front of the rover. Mount Sharp, a peak that is about 3.4 miles high, is visible rising above the terrain, though in one "eye" a box on the rover holding the drill bits obscures the view.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

– This view of the landscape to the north of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on the first day after landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This view of the landscape to the north of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on the first day after landing.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This is one of the first pictures taken by Curiosity after it landed. It shows the rover's shadow on the Martian soil.

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Another of the first images taken by the rover. The clear dust cover that protected the camera during landing has popped open. Part of the spring that released the dust cover can be seen at the bottom right, near the rover's wheel.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

This image shows Curiosity's main science target, Mount Sharp. The rover's shadow can be seen in the foreground. The dark bands in the distances are dunes.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

Another of the first images beamed back from NASA's Curiosity rover on August 6, 2012, is the shadow cast by the rover on the surface of Mars.

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Photos:Mars rover Curiosity

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover, shown in this artist's rendering, touched down on the planet on August 6, 2012.

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Story highlights

NASA analyzing early entry, landing data to help with future missions

Curiosity landed very near target site, important for relatively tight space

"It was an impressive ride," said NASA's Allen Chen

Rover will take days to install software for full movement, analytic capabilities

Early data shows the Mars rover Curiosity landed with amazing accuracy this week, coming down about 1.5 miles from its target after a 350-million-mile journey, NASA scientists said Friday, perhaps giving planners more confidence about landing spacecraft in tight spaces in the future.

The $2.6 billion rover is on a two-year mission to determine whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting life. It landed Monday and will spend the next four days installing operational software that will give it full movement and analytic capabilities, scientists said at a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Curiosity missed its target entry point into Mars' atmosphere by about only one mile, and most everything in its complicated descent and landing operations -- a spectacle popularly known as the "seven minutes of terror" -- happened on time, including the deployment of the largest-ever supersonic parachute and the heat shield separation.

"From all the data we've received so far, we flew this right down the middle, and it's incredible to work on a plan for (years) and then have things happen ... according to plan," said Steve Sell, who was involved in the powered descent phase.

"It was an impressive ride," said NASA's Allen Chen, the operations lead for descent and landing.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – Water-ice clouds, polar ice and other geographic features can be seen in this full-disk image of Mars from 2011. NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover touched down on the planet on August 6, 2012. Take a look at stunning photographs of Mars over the years. Check out images from the Mars rover Curiosity.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – This image was captured in 1976 by Viking 2, one of two probes sent to investigate the surface of Mars for the first time. NASA's Viking landers blazed the trail for future missions to Mars.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – The Valles Marineris rift system on Mars is 10 times longer, five times deeper and 20 times wider than the Grand Canyon. This composite image was made from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which launched in 2001.

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Exploring Mars – The Nili Fossae region of Mars is one of the largest exposures of clay minerals discovered by the OMEGA spectrometer on Mars Express Orbiter. This image was taken in 2007 as part of a campaign to examine more than two dozen potential landing sites for NASA's new Mars rover, Curiosity, also known as the NASA Mars Science Laboratory.

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Exploring Mars – NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander descends to the surface of Mars in May 2008. Fewer than half of the Mars missions have made successful landings.

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Exploring Mars – Phoenix's robotic arm scoops up a sample on June 10, 2008, the 16th Martian day after landing. The lander's solar panel is seen in the lower left.

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Exploring Mars – In 2006, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured a 360-degree view known as the McMurdo panorama. The images were taken at the time of year when Mars is farthest from the sun and dust storms are less frequent.

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Exploring Mars – The European Space Agency's Mars Express captured this view of Valles Marineris in 2004. The area shows mesas and cliffs as well as features that indicate erosion from flowing water.

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Exploring Mars – This view is a vertical projection that combines more than 500 exposures taken by Phoenix in 2008. The black circle on the spacecraft is where the camera itself is mounted.

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Exploring Mars – A portion of the west rim of the Endeavour Crater sweeps southward in this view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2011. The crater is 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) across.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – A photo captured by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor in 2000 offers evidence that the planet may have been a land of lakes in its earliest period, with layers of Earth-like sedimentary rock that could harbor the fossils of any ancient Martian life.

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Exploring Mars – A U.S. flag and a DVD containing a message for future explorers of Mars, science fiction stories and art about the planet, and the names of 250,000 people sit on the deck of Phoenix in 2008.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – A rock outcrop dubbed Longhorn and the sweeping plains of the Gusev Crater are seen in a 2004 image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

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Exploring Mars – Although it is 45 kilometers (28 miles) wide, countless layers of ice and dust have all but buried the Udzha Crater on Mars. The crater lies near the edge of the northern polar cap. This image was taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2010.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – NASA's Opportunity examines rocks inside an alcove called Duck Bay in the western portion of the Victoria Crater in 2007.

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Exploring Mars – Pictured is a series of troughs and layered mesas in the Gorgonum Chaos region of Mars in 2008. This photo was taken by Mars Orbiter Camera on the Mars Global Surveyor.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – An image captured in 2008 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows at least four Martian avalanches, or debris falls, taking place. Material, likely including fine-grained ice and dust and possibly large blocks, detached from a towering cliff and cascaded to the gentler slopes below.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – This 2008 image spans the floor of Ius Chasma's southern trench in the western region of Valles Marineris, the solar system's largest canyon. Ius Chasma is believed to have been shaped by a process called sapping, in which water seeped from the layers of the cliffs and evaporated before it reached the canyon floor.

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Photos:Photos: Exploring Mars

Exploring Mars – Pictured is the Martian landscape at Meridiani Planum, where the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity successfully landed in 2004. This is one of the first images beamed back to Earth from the rover shortly after it touched down.

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Exploring Mars – An image from the Mars Global Surveyor in 2000 shows potential evidence of massive sedimentary deposits in the western Arabia Terra impact crater on the surface of Mars.

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Exploring Mars – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures a dust devil blowing across the Martian surface east of the Hellas impact basin in 2007. Dust devils form when the temperature of the atmosphere near the ground is much warmer than that above. The diameter of this dust devil is about 200 meters (650 feet).

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Exploring Mars – Soft soil is exposed when the wheels of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit dig into a patch of ground dubbed Troy in 2009.

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Exploring Mars – An image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the floor of the Antoniadi Crater in 2009.

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Exploring Mars – The larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, is seen in 2008 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Exploring Mars – Earth and the moon are seen in 2007 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. At the time the image was taken, Earth was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles) from Mars.

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Tail winds might account for some of the off-target distance, NASA's Gavin Mendeck said, but the actual landing spot was well within the expected range of uncertainty, or the area where the rover could well have ended up.

"With what we learn over the next few months, we'll see if we can chop (the area of uncertainty) back a bit" for future missions, Chen said.

Chen said the early information about the landing is based on only 1 megabyte of data received on the day of the landing; much more information will be received in the coming weeks.

Precision in landing was important because NASA chose a relatively tight area for Curiosity's arrival: The Gale Crater, which contains an 18,000-foot high mountain about 7.5 miles south of the landing site.

The rover's prime target is Mount Sharp, the mountain in the crater. Scientists hope the layers of rock that form the mountain will give them a timeline of the history of Mars.

Though Curiosity's primary science mission has yet to begin, the rover, along with probes in orbit, already have transmitted images. On Thursday, NASA released a sweeping color panorama of the planet's surface, showing the rocky, reddish desert surrounding it and the mountain it will explore in the coming months. The 360-degree view captures the landscape of Gale Crater.

NASA has said photographs like the ones beamed back by the rover, as well as others taken by the probes in orbit, will be used to map a path to the mountain's base.

The rover is built to run for two years, but a previous rover, Opportunity, has been working on Mars since 2004, well beyond the three months NASA planned. Opportunity's sister rover, Spirit, ran from 2004 to 2010.

The rover is installing its full surface operations software after the landing because its computers didn't have room for it during flight. The new software essentially replaces the flight operations programs, which Curiosity now doesn't need, NASA said.